Phone Line Being Cancelled

[#1]

Good afternoon everyone,
Earlier today I received an email stating my phone line will be transferred to another provided on the 19/5/2011.
As I have not requested this (nor do I know who the other service provider is) I phoned CS earlier and spoke to a very helpful fellow who cancelled the move for me 
However I have received a service notice this afternoon saying that my Talk evening & weekend product will be cancelled on the 26/5/2011. (this is dated nearly 1 hour after the ticket relating to my phone call earlier)
I am feeling a bit confused as I thought that this was sorted during my phone call or does it just take a bit of time for the cancellation stop notice to go though? 
I have raised this as a question but I'm wondering if anyone else has had this occur before.
I would like to point out that i have no intention of changing my service provider as I have had a very good service from Plusnet 

[#2]

Hi starshade,
That should disappear from the account once the system picks up that the order to move away has been cancelled, which should take 24 - 48 hours or so.
Hope that reassures you.

[#3]

Thanks Matt,
I was hoping that was the case just confused me a bit is all 

[#4]

I was very interested to read this message because I also received an email in the last week to tell me that my phone line was being transferred even though i had not made this request.  Plusnet have sorted it out by cancelling the request but because of the way in which these requests are received via a BT system they are unable to give me information on who could have made this transfer request.
I had assumed that this was something that happened infrequently but perhaps not.  Is there a service provider out there who may be using this as a method of obtaining new customers?  Could it be connected to the large number of unsolicited marketing phone calls we seem to receive from companies who use call centres in the Indian sub continet to try and get us to change to a 'cheaper' provider? 
I had almost decided to forget about it as my transfer had been cancelled but I am now wondering whether I should follow it up with OFCOM to see if I can find out who originated the request for the transfer.  It would be interesting to hear whether there are lots of other people out there who have also been subject to false transfer requests.

[#5]

Quote from: Rosemary

Is there a service provider out there who may be using this as a method of obtaining new customers?

StalkStalk

[#6]

From 2009
"Slamming - where a consumer is switched to another provider without their knowledge and/or consent - is the most complained about issue to Ofcom in the fixed line market, with nearly 1,000 complaints each month over the last year."
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Nl1/Newsroom/DG_175874

[#7]

Thank you alanf for this useful link.  I had not realised that this was such a problem.  I notice that the entry on the government page stating that they were going to do something about this issue was dated March 2009 so obviously they still have some way to go.  It seems to me that one immediate improvement would be to provide information to the owner of the phone line on who had requested the transfer of their line and to use data protection as the excuse for not being able to see this information is crazy.

[#8]

I was very recently watching a Government Select Committee meeting concerning telecoms on the BBC Parliament channel where high level OFCOM management were asked about this very issue.
They replied that they were looking into the issue as a matter of urgency and confirmed it was very high on their complaints league table.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01177nz/Select_Committees_Ofcom/ particularly 1hr : 58 mins : 30 secs in.

[#9]

Thanks for that Strat. So Ofcom wants to encourage competition and because people cannot be bothered wait to to sign a piece of paper confirming that they want to move the default is that you will be moved unless you respond within 10 days to a letter by saying that you don't want to move.  Letters can take longer than this to arrive and are people never to be allowed to leave their homes for a few days? Switching provider is not something one will be doing every day so I think that a couple of weeks delay in proceedings is a price worth paying to avoid slamming even if the numbers affected are small.

[#10]

So OFCOM prefer a transfer to be gainer led rather than loser led.
That may be ok unless the gainer is Talk Talk or companies of a similar sales model

[#11]

OFCOM finds TalkTalk guilty of misselling including slamming.
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/phones/2011/05/ofcom-finds-talktalk-guilty-of-misselling

[#12]

just a little update found out that it was actually Orange that tried to take the line. Don't think i have ever even looked at their landline  or spoken to them but hey ho its all sorted now